"Those who don't know history are destined to repeat it."
Edmund Burke. What happened on this Day in History?

Wednesday, October 23, 2013

This Day in History: Oct 23, 42 B.C.: Brutus commits suicide

Marcus Junius Brutus, a leading conspirator in the assassination of Julius Caesar, commits suicide after his defeat at the second battle of Philippi.

Two years before, Brutus had joined Gaius Cassius Longinus in the
plot against the Roman dictator Julius Caesar, believing he was striking
a blow for the restoration of the Roman Republic.

However, the result
of Caesar's assassination was to plunge the Roman world into a new round
of civil wars, with the Republican forces of Brutus and Cassius vying
for supremacy against Octavian and Mark Antony. After being defeated by
Antony at a battle in Philippi, Greece, in October 42 B.C., Cassius
killed himself. On October 23, Brutus' army was crushed by Octavian and
Antony at a second encounter at Philippi, and Brutus took his own life.

Antony and Octavian soon turned against each other, and in 27 B.C.
the Roman Republic was lost forever with the ascendance of Octavian as
Augustus Caesar, the first emperor of Rome.